THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 757 



growing strength. If God should hold in his right hand all truth 

 and in his left hand only the ceaseless struggle to reach after 

 truth, and he should say to me. Choose ; I would fall in humble- 

 ness before his left hand and say: 



" ' Father, give ; the perfect truth is but for thee alone.' " 



THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 

 A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY. 



(Lowell Institute Lectures, 1896.) 

 By WILLIAM Z. KIPLEY, Pii. D., 



ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY; LECTURER IN 

 ANTHEOPO-GEOGRAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. 



T 



IIL BLONDES AND BRUNETTES. 



^HE color of the skin has been from the earliest times regarded 

 as a primary means of racial identification. The ancient 

 Egyptians were accustomed to distinguish the races known to 

 them by this means both upon their monuments and in their 

 inscriptions. Notwithstanding this long acquaintance, the phe- 

 nomenon of pigmentation remains to-day among the least under- 

 stood departments of physical anthropology. One point alone 

 seems to have been definitely proved : however marked the con- 

 trasts in color between the several varieties of the human species 

 may be, there is no corresponding difference in anatomical struc- 

 ture discoverable. 



Pigmentation arises from the deposition of coloring matter in 

 a special series of cells, which lie just between the translucent 

 outer skin or epidermis and the inner or true skin known as the 

 cutis. It was long supposed that these pigment cells were 

 peculiar to the dark-skinned races; but investigation has shown 

 that the structure in all types is identical. The differences in 

 color are due, not to the presence or absence of the cells them- 

 selves, but to variations in the amount of pigment therein de- 

 posited. In this respect, therefore, the negro differs physiologic- 

 ally, rather than anatomically, from the European or the Asiatic. 

 Yet this trait, although superficial so to speak, is exceedingly 

 persistent, even through considerable racial intermixture. The 

 familiar legal test in our Southern States in the ante-beUimi days 

 for the determination of the legal status of octoroons was to look 

 for the bit of color at the base of the finger nails. Under the 

 transparent outer skin in this place the telltale pigmentation 

 would remain, despite a long- continued infusion of white blood. 



In respect of the color of the skin, we may roughly divide the 

 human species into four groups indicated upon our world map. 



